What kinds of companies do you work with?

We typically work with small engineering and manufacturing companies. These companies focus on niche markets, usually selling their products to other businesses. These companies are usually large enough that their products are established in the market (they sell a somewhat predictable quantity of their products per year), but small enough that they do not have the resources to set up a design automation system on their own.

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What information do you need from me to get started on automating my design?

We need at least one complete bill of materials (BOM) and drawing set for your product. A few more drawing sets for different configurations of your product would also help. If you also have any brochures or promotional material for your product, we can use that as a second check during the design audit. After we analyze these items, we will be ready to sit down with you in a one-on-one meeting and perform the design audit.

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How long does it take CrankOutDesigns to build my design automation program?

This depends on three things:

  • the complexity of your product
  • the number of rules that drive your product design
  • the file format(s) of your drawing package

It can take anywhere from one week for a very simple product to several months for a more complicated one.

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What factors determine the cost of building a design automation program?

The cost depends on many factors: the complexity of your product design, the number of pages in a drawing package, the number of parts in the top-level assembly, the proportion of configurable parts to static parts within the assembly, the number of rules and calculations that drive the configurations, and your drawing package requirements. For a free consultation, contact sales@crankoutdesigns.com today.

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What is the typical return on investment of a design automation program?

The typical ROI scenario is this: if you make sixteen sales of your product in one year, your investment will have paid for itself. If you sell more than sixteen, your ROI increases dramatically. That is why it makes more sense to apply CrankOutDesigns to your most popular products.

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What if I don't have the rules for configuring my product already defined?

That's okay - many companies are in the same position, and that's why we are here. We can help you determine all of the constraints and criteria that will drive the design of your product, using our proprietary design audit system.

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What if I have more than one configurable product?

If you have several configurable products, let's automate them all! We should pick the "low-hanging fruit" first - these are your most popular products.

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What if my product is mostly configurable, but it always seems like my customers come up with something new to add to it?

This is actually quite common, and is probably the #1 reason why you haven't already taken steps to automating the design of your product. The fact is there will always be "one-off" type features that your customers will ask for. However, if we can define and formalize even 80% of the possibilities, you will still be well ahead of your competition, in terms of cranking out drawing packages with speed and accuracy. And as for the remaining 20% - you will have plenty of time to manually add those tweaks to the base design that you will generate using your design automation program. According to the Pareto Principle (the 80-20 rule), it will likely be more profitable for you to cross that 20% bridge when you come to it.

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What if my product or design rules change in the future?

If your product or drawing package requirements change in the future, it won't be a problem. We will fix up your design automation program to match your new requirements for a nominal fee.

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Do you help with the design of my product?

No, we do not help with the design of the product itself - we are only responsible for the building the design automation program. This means that when we sit down together to establish the rules that define your product, you are ultimately responsible for those rules. This point is upheld in the contract that you will sign when you launch a project with CrankOutDesigns.

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My product is configurable, but extremely simple. Is design automation right for me?

In this case, CrankOutDesigns may not be feasible for you. Consider the following questions:

  • Can you manually generate a drawing package for a new configuration of your product in a relatively short time (less than an hour)?
  • Do you never experience any consistency issues between drawing packages?
  • Do you never find errors in your drawing sets after they have been checked and released?

If you answered yes to all three questions, then your product design process is already robust (congratulations!). But please keep us in mind when you come up with new and more complex products in the future.

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